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Police in Vietnam Break Up Marriage Brokerage Ring

Police burst into a house in Ho Chi Minh City only 5m from a police station and found 66 young Vietnamese girls being ‘carefully’ and ‘thoroughly’ scrutinized by two South Korean suitors.

They detained Thang Ngai Linh, a 46-year-old woman who has recruited the girls and promised pick nice wives for the two Koreans for a fee of VND1.5 million each (US$93.7). The suitors, one South Korean girl and an interpreter were also summoned to the station. Sources said the suitors even searched the girls’ bodies ‘entirely’, to check for scars and birthmarks.

Brokering marriage for money is illegal in Vietnam.

Linh mostly recruited the girls from rural Mekong River Delta in the south and promised to marry them off to rich men from the Republic of Korea. Linh admitted during the past three days she had ‘shown off’ 200 girls but said she did not know the practice is illegal. She said the suitors have promised to give their future in-laws US$400-500 each and take their newly-found wives to Korea to start a family.

Ironically, Linh has been blacklisted before for housing girls in her rented house, which is just separated by one house from the ward police station. Thus, within only a fortnight, the city police discovered three such marriage brokerages with nearly 400 girls involved. It has been a fact that many poor Vietnamese girls have been trying to marry South Koreans, Taiwanese and Malaysians. Some were happy but some abused, even forced into sex trade in the foreign countries.
 
Last year, a local newspaper carried news that dozens of Vietnamese girls were lined up in the Republic of Korea to be selected by suitors. Just last December several international newspapers reported that Malaysian men “bought” Vietnamese wives at bridal parades for a mere US$5,600 each. There are also reports that Vietnamese girls were even put on glass displays at marriage exhibitions.

Adapted from: "Police catch 66 girls in marriage selection ring." Thanh Nien Daily. 23 April 2007.